NOTES
Has the car boot sale entirely replaced the church-hall jumble sale,even for the Scouts? |
Every aspect of the the weekend jumble-collecting and selling was very enjoyable. We would leaflet the houses one week and collect from them, with a hired van, the next. By sticking to the most expensive areas we collected good stuff and became serious players in the jumble game. Of course, it was never possible to outdo the Scouts, who were the acknowledged masters of the trade. However, of all the charities jumbling in the town, we definitely came second. In these early days, we took the jumble straight to the church hall (we used half a dozen different halls in rotation), ready for the sale in the afternoon. The old ladies who queued for an hour or more at the locked doors of the hall were a fearsome breed. They would start hammering at the doors and screaming to be let in long before the official opening time. Whoever was foolhardy enough to volunteer to open the doors at the appointed time had to run for his life when the terrible horde burst through. And they were hard bargainers, expecting to pay no more than 3d (just over 1p) for any item, whether a coat, an ornament or a lampshade. We nevertheless generally made at least £15, partly on account of the sheer volume of stuff we shifted, partly by training the volunteers to spot when someone wanted something badly enough to cave in (with much ill-feeling) over the price, but also through the practice of sneaking antique dealers in through the back door before the raging mass was let in. These dealers would nearly always find two or three items of interest. This was a most heinous crime in the eyes of the old ladies and had been known to cause near-riots elsewhere, but we were more cunning, insofar as we bunged up the keyholes of the main doors, so they couldn't see what was going on while they were waiting outside. |
| The best part of jumble days (alternate Saturdays) was after the actual sale. Once we had dumped the leftover jumble on the local tip and returned the van to the hire firm, we took the money back to Carolyn Holland's flat in Ship Street. There, we counted it and extracted a few bob so that someone could go out out to Gardiner Street Market to buy enough cheap meat and veg to make a meal for the eight or so of us who chose to stay for this. In later days, we started helping ourselves to a rather larger slice of the takings in order to buy a few bottles of plonk to go with the meal. Nevertheless, money began to accumulate nicely in the bank, not only from the jumble sales, but also from the sponsored walks and publicity mentioned in the previous chapter. The only problem was that I had managed to persuade the bovine Committee to agree to a single signature on cheques, for convenience sake. It could be the treasurer's, the secretary's - or mine . . . |
| It wasn't long before I was routinely making out cheques to cash, thereby supplementing my Social Security payments sufficiently to be able to escalate the pub-going and curry house dining to the level of Leeds days. Indeed I could go beyond that level, insofar as I was now free to hang around in pubs any time they were open - but only a few pubs. In general, pub landlords and managers were responsible for most of the last remnants of opposition to long hair. Elsewhere, the battle had largely been won by this time, but not many pubs in Brighton would serve long-haired men. We were restricted to the Norfolk Arms, the King and Queen, the Harvey Arms and several small scrumpy houses of ill-repute, for the time being at least. They were more than enough to be getting on with, though. |